Artem 'veeea' Vezhenkov Leads PocketFives Rankings By 13 Points
By the slimmest of margins – 13 points to be exact – ‘Artem ‘veeea’ Vezhenkov‘ leads the PocketFives Rankings. He is starting his third week at the top, but with a small lead, there could be a brand new #1 seven days from now.
Vezhenkov is quickly nearing $5 million in career online tournament cashes and is fresh off a sixth place finish in the PokerStars Super Tuesday at the end of January for $27,000, which netted him 274 PLB Points. He is a three-time PocketFives Triple Crown winner who earned two of them in March of last year. ‘veeea’ has $3.3 million in career winnings on PokerStars alone and has 7,198 PLB Points.
Second place in the Rankings belongs to ‘C Darwin2‘, who has 7,186 PLB Points and trails ‘veeea’ by a baker’s dozen. ‘C Darwin2’ was up seven spots this week to #2 in the world and finished fourth in a TCOOP Wrap-Up event for $62,000 and 435 PLB Points to help his cause. The same day ‘veeea’ finished sixth in the Super Tuesday, ‘C Darwin2’ took second for $89,000 and over 500 PLB Points. Two days prior, he won the Full Tilt Sunday Major. Needless to say, the Swede has been on a tear.
Amazingly, four of the top five players in the rankings this week are from Sweden, with ‘veeea’ being the only exception. ‘C Darwin2’ calls Stockholm home and sits at $3.5 million in career online MTT winnings across almost 2,000 in the money finishes. Now, can he overtake ‘veeea’ for the #1 spot?
Moving up four spots in the rankings was Oscar ‘MendaLerenda‘ Serradell from Bristol, who landed at #10. He was ranked as high as #6 on PocketFives last year and won a TCOOP $82 No Limit Draw event one week ago for $7,000. He also took 13th in the series’ Main Event over the weekend and earned $12,000. Serradell has 327 top-three finishes and is the top-ranked poker player in the UK.
The biggest jump inside the top 100 of the rankings went to Grayson ‘gray31‘ Ramage, who moved up from #95 to #14. Ramage won a TCOOP High Roller for a commanding $291,000 over the weekend, which was good for over 1,200 PLB Points. Ten days before that, he took down the PokerStars $109 Rebuy for another $13,000.
Ramage is nearly at $6 million in career online tournament winnings and is the top-ranked player in Costa Rica. He plays as ‘swish3113‘ on Full Tilt and is now seven spots off his all-time high in the rankings set in 2011.
Greece’s Damianos ‘damourinio‘ Aslanidis entered the top 100 in the world at #31, his highest position ever. He won the Sunday Million over the weekend and raked in 1,100 PLB Points, one of four tournaments he took down in the last three days of January. Aslanidis is the top dog in Greece and has over 3,100 tracked in the money finishes.
Romania’s Alex ‘tilt21sted‘ Papazianmoved up from #79 to #33 on the strength of a runner-up finish in the TCOOP High Roller for $209,000. He is the top-ranked Romanian poker player and could be found as high as #15 on PocketFives last year. On PokerStars, where he has $1.5 million in career winnings, you can find him under the user name ‘steakaddict.’. He cashed three times during EPT Prague last December to boot.
Finally this week, Hungary’s ‘Ballage87‘ cracked the top 50 for the first time. He won his first PocketFives Triple Crown at the end of January and is up to 70 career victories. He’s the #2 ranked player in Hungary and is about to pass $900,000 in online tournament scores.
Here are the top 10 players in the rankings this week along with the PLB score for each:
